K. Dawn Goodwin 97C
The journey from innocent child to worldly wise thirty-something can be rocky and filled with “clever, sardonic commentary.” For K. Dawn Goodwin 97C, her coming-of-age was a rollercoaster of emotion, relationships and unforgettable experiences. “I guess what fueled my passion to sit down and rant about all my mundane childhood rites of passage was my frustrated worship of the sanitized perfect version of life. Movies and boys and the Bible and Barbies and my virginity and the mirror: all these things I was taught to believe in were supposed to save me. But they were all so fantastically and un-categorically false and misleading.” She found herself questioning, “Why doesn’t reality ever match up to what we see on television?”
Goodwin’s examination began at the lowest point in her life, when a difficult divorce and custody battle battered her self-esteem to the breaking point. “I felt totally washed out. My children were my life, but I had nothing left in me,” she recalls.
Raised in tony Connecticut, “For the last 12+ years of my life, I’ve lived in the desert otherwise known as the rural-burbia of the poor deep south, “ she explains. “I decided to trust whatever came up and write about the experiences that shaped me.” As an English and Creative Writing major at Emory College, writing was always a comfort to her in dark times. Emory’s Winship Professor and Director of the W.B. Yeats Foundation James Flannery “was one of the first people who gave me license to write whatever I wanted. It was liberating. He’s been very supportive of my work, and it’s always left an impression on me.”
Until He Comes, published in December by Gallery Books, a division of Simon and Schuster, is a brutally honest, at times painfully raw, and sardonic look at one girl’s passage from the structure of organized religion to the freedom of adult spiritual expression. The memoir “is me making fun of my never-ending search for a savior,” she points out. “But this is about more than just the tortured tightrope walk through fundamentalism; this is a powerful reflection of the core issues facing young women: low self-esteem, depression, eating disorders, sex (and almost-sex) and hypocritical messages of perfection.”
Returning to Emory’s campus as a published author causes Goodwin to reflect on her time in Atlanta, as she does in her book. “The people at Emory impacted my life the most. It was a cultural infusion for me. My boyfriend was Jewish, and he helped me release my death grip on Christianity. My college experience was transformative.” As she points out in her memoir, “It never occurred to me that I was the protagonist at the beginning of a cautionary tale.”
Goodwin knew at first glance that Emory was the college for her. “I applied early decision and never applied anywhere else,” she says. “The college impressed me on an emotional and gut level. It was a great decision.”
Her advice to other alumni? “There is something beautiful about being led by your heart and not your head. If I followed my head, I would have been paralyzed by fear,” she says. “In this economy when everyone is losing jobs, be bold and find your joy. Leave what you’re doing if you hate it. Find out who you are, not who everyone is telling you you should be.”
To meet Goodwin in person, please visit:
Emory University Bookstore, February 4 at 1 p.m.
Goodwin will perform a reading, share her writing process and answer audience questions. She will also be available to autograph copies of Until He Comes.
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books,
Emory Alumni
